Physical Layer Bootstrapping Protocol for Cognitive Radio Networks

In this paper a novel signaling protocol for co-existence and spectrum sharing among cognitive radio nodes is proposed. This protocol allows the radios to rendezvous with each other in a statically allocated spectrum band through on-off keying signaling and reliable spectrum sensing. It enables the radios to have non-cooperative communication in the sense that they do not need to exchange their modulation schemes and frequency channel. The proposed protocol requires no synchronization and is augmented with power control mechanisms. Analysis of the proposed protocol in terms of timing, probability of a successful connection and energy efficiency is also given.